What makes you thinks these other being in the universe aren't just as bad or worse. What makes you think these hypothetical other beings in the Universe are even watching? Hopefully you're not going to cite any alien abduction stories.

Apparently you didn't see the shit-fit people were throwing several years ago when we deliberately crashed a probe into the moon to observe the composition of the regolith it kicked up. Dumping trash on the moon they said. Ridiculous, but there are apparently quite a few people on Slashdot who had this opinion.

None. That's my point. If you want build anything off planet, it is inefficient to bring the materials from earth. Yes, I know the article was billing this project as a way to get valuable metals for use here on Earth....but that strikes me as ridiculous...just something they tell the public to attract investment and positive attitudes. The real money is too far into the future after infrastructure is created.

"Hey, it's no problem if you want to protest. We have zone far away from the cameras, surrounded by snipers and riot police. There's no food, water, or porta-potties. Feel free to protest, as long as you do it there."

What harm does it do to rename a JPG to TXT? Why would I distrust an extension? If you put an infected executable on my machine and gave it a TXT file extension it's totally harmless. So it tries to open the file in notepad....no harm there.

Don't make it sound so sinister. The vote wasn't to demote Pluto. It was a vote to settle on the criteria an astronomical body must meet in order to be a planet. This was necessary because we've found more Pluto like bodies, and chances are we'll find more in the decades to follow.